With the increasing demand for “content” in so many channels of entertainment and other media, are people who write, create visual art and movies highly respected, in high demand and getting great compensation?

Not so much.

According to at least two people in a position to know, the present “system” is far from encouraging of artists.

Articles and other resources for helping you gain new perspectives and be more creative: ideas for enhancing creativity and innovation.

Continued from How To Be More Creative.

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Need a Creativity Jolt? Drop by a Modern Art Show

By Lawrence E. McCullough | Mar 21, 2013

Synopsis: 8 Imagination Boosters I got from SCOPE New York 2013

WHAT’S TRULY WONDERFUL about so much of today’s visual Art is that it engages every sense, not just what you see (or think you see).

Next time you’re caught in a creative dry spell, spend a while wandering through a Contemporary Art show and have a universe of new ideas rain down on your parched psyche.

Part of the widely-circulated comments by Pearl Buck (winner of a Nobel Prize in Literature in 1938) includes this: “The truly creative mind [feels] the overpowering necessity to create, create, create — so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, their very breath is cut off… By some strange, unknown, inward urgency they are not really alive unless they are creating.”

That “inward urgency” is a common quality of accomplished creative people.

Director Kathryn Bigelow wrote in praise of her lead actress Jessica Chastain in “Zero Dark Thirty” :

There are many ideas in the Creative Mind posts – not to mention all over the Internet – for how to develop creativity.

It can be helpful to make use of some of the most basic concepts.

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” Leonardo da Vinci

From post: Thinking Like Leonardo Da Vinci.

Gail McMeekin, L.I.C.S.W., M.S.W. is author of a number of books, including The 12 Secrets of Highly Successful Women: A Portable Life Coach for Creative Women, and Boost Your Creativity, Productivity and Profits in 21 Steps.

In her article “Creative Catalysts,” she lists 25 ideas that are often very simple, but can be powerful strategies to help us be more creative.

In a recent Creativity Post article, science writer Sam McNerney provides a stimulating and encouraging overview of a “renaissance in creativity in both the lab and the pages of popular books and magazines.”

He says that “Cognitive flexibility, the ability to switch between thinking about two concepts or consider multiple perspectives simultaneously” is a “popular topic in the neuroscience world.”

Darya Zabelina, a creativity researcher at Northwestern University told him “a lot of people are studying cognitive flexibility from a lot of different perspectives.”

It may be advice often given to writers, but is the idea to “write what you know” always understood, and valuable for creating good work?

In his post “Write what you know” – the most misunderstood piece of good advice, ever., Jason Gots comments that writer Nathan Englander “says that ‘write what you know’ is one of the best and most misunderstood pieces of advice, ever.

“It paralyzes aspiring authors into thinking that authenticity in fiction means thinly veiled autobiography. If you’re a drunken, brawling adventurer, like Hemingway, no problem.

“But Englander, who grew up in the Orthodox Jewish community of West Hempstead, New York, says he spent a lot of his childhood watching TV, playing videogames, and dreaming about being a writer. Was he required to write about the Atari 2600?”

These four P’s of Product, People, Process and environmental Press have been used as frameworks by many creativity researchers and writers.

In a helpful overview article, Sandeep Gautam provides explanations of these concepts, and references to various creativity experts. Here are a few excerpts.

First, to start with the illustration: “Blind monks examining an elephant”, an ukiyo-e print by Hanabusa Itchō (1652–1724).

The story that inspired this artwork is basically that “a group of blind men (or men in the dark) touch an elephant to learn what it is like. Each one feels a different part, but only one part, such as the side or the tusk. They then compare notes and learn that they are in complete disagreement.” [Wikipedia]

Gautam concludes his article:

“In the end, it is important to realize that creativity is all things to all people, but still needs desperately, and would benefit from immensely, an integrative research paradigm; otherwise like the proverbial blind men and the elephant, we may end up getting narrow and useless conceptions of creativity and ignore the big elephant in the room.”

Continue reading… »

There are a number of examples of people bold enough and entrepreneurial enough to create and publish their own books, often leading to being traditionally published and marketed.

Christopher Paolini began writing “Eragon” at the age of 15 and his parents decided to self-publish the novel, which was re-published by Alfred A. Knopf.

“The Artist’s Way” began as a collection of “tips and hints from different artists and authors” by Julia Cameron and Mark Bryan. After it was turned down by literary agency William Morris, they self-published it and it was later published by Jeremy Tarcher (Penguin) in 1992.

The book was eventually put into the “Self-Publishing Hall of Fame” after “selling millions of copies worldwide.” [Wikipedia]

Author and personal development coach Tama Kieves self-published her first book “This Time I Dance!: Creating the Work You Love” and its level of popularity led to Tarcher/Penguin re-publishing new editions.

My new Developing Creativity Magazine includes articles on creativity research, psychology and personal growth topics, in an interactive format: You can click to “turn” the pages, play videos inside the magazine, zoom viewing size – and more.

For this first issue, I have included articles from The Creative Mind archives for October, 2012, so you may have already read them – but you might enjoy the new digital magazine format. Plus, the contents are viewable on an iPhone, iPad and other mobile devices.

Contents of issue 1.1:

• Creativity Expiration Date?
• Creative Passion or Just Doing What You Really Want
• Creative Thinking: Imagine You Are Seven Again
• Lena Dunham (“Girls”) on Creating
• Facing Our Demons
• Henry Miller on Rules of Creativity
• Are Gifted Underachievers More Creative?
• Junot Diaz on Creative Thinking

Read Developing Creativity Magazine Issue 1.1

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Both naturalistic and out of the ordinary sensory experiences have inspired artistic creation since our cave painting days.

In the Introduction to his book on the topic, neurologist Oliver Sacks notes that in the early sixteenth century, the term hallucination meant simply “a wandering mind.”

He explains that “in general, hallucinations are quite unlike dreams. Hallucinations often seem to have the creativity of imagination, dreams, or fantasy — or the vivid detail and externality of perception.

“But hallucination is none of these, though it may share some neurophysiological mechanisms with them.”

He says his favorite definition is that given by early psychologist William James: “An hallucination is a strictly sensational form of consciousness, as good and true a sensation as if there were a real object there. The object happens to be not there, that is all.”